


Better The Devil You Know

by Linnet



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Because of Reasons, Character building, Choices, Gen, Memory Loss, Repression, Sass, Snark, but also emotional stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linnet/pseuds/Linnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One angel, one demon, six thousand years, and just a few more than seven days.</p><p>Crowley doesn't remember heaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meinposhbastard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/gifts).



> My first ever GO fic - please be kind! I've been reading Carol Churchill's work, and feel in love with the way she tells stories. I don't have her talent, but I thought it would be fun to try and see what I could do with using her techniques as a precursor to the kind of traditional novel climax that she so stoically avoids most of the time. The result? This strange little story. 
> 
> Many thanks to Dee, you gorgeous creature, for being hilarious and completely and utterly absurd, and basically coming up with the background for this story (which I then shamelessly abused... you shouldn't leave me on weekends without WiFi, my muse rebells). You never cease to surprise and entertain me, my dear. Though I sometimes resent you for the funny looks I get when I snort ungracefully at your emails in public places ;)

Before Creation, Heaven is born. At first, it’s a little confusing. Wings flutter and flap, voices rise high in confusion above a cacophony of noise which does, eventually, resolve itself into the choirs. Which is a relief for everybody. Eventually, all the Orders of Angels have been established, and they are happily going about their duties. God rests for a while as his new creations settle into a pattern of existence. All is calm. 

Only one of the Cherubim does not stand with their garrison, but waits alone for the coming of the earth. On the edge of heaven, the angel looks out across the void. Iseraphil’s being is full of love and wonder, but the angel's mind is not at rest. The four wings of his being flutter as Iseraphil thinks. 

Angels of every order have not yet learnt, or indeed needed, to hide their Grace. Iseraphil knows that this mood of Grace will soon be sensed, that this wandering Cherub will soon be found. The garrison will call, and the angel will go back to them. Until then, Iseraphil is content to wait. Open, receptive, drawing on the understanding of all the others in heaven. 

Nearly all. There is one, just one. Nearby, so the Cherub can feel their Grace more clearly than some of the further brothers. Except that it is closed off. There is Grace, in abundance, but it is locked away. Iseraphil wants to cry out at the pain the angel must be suffering for doing so. 

"Oh dear." Says Iseraphil. 

Not too far away, a lone Seraph is passing. The event in itself is highly unusual; the duty of Seraphim is to hail God, and to always be in His company. Nachash’s beautiful voice is silent, and the angel’s heart is heavy. Even though the Seraph’s Grace is greatly depleted, there is enough to sense the realisation of the angel closest to Nachash. The Seraph winces, and moves to turn away from the other angel. The movement is too slow. 

A Cherub stands at the left of the Seraph, close by, too close to escape the strength of any other Seraph’s Grace. Nachash knows the angel. They all know all their brothers. Iseraphil is one of the Cherubim the Seraph remembers from the very beginning, when they were created together. They are family. 

“You're hurt.” The other angel states. Nachash verifies with a nod of head, but remains silent. Even with depleted Grace, it is possible for a Seraph’s being to shine too brightly for a Cherub to behold. “Let me help you.”

“No, Iseraphil.” The Seraph speaks as quietly as possible, wary of the danger the Cherub is in. “You can't. I might hurt you." 

“No, you won't. You can't, your Grace is too depleted.” Iseraphil speaks equally quietly. For the Cherubim, doing so is a mark of respect. “You are my brother. It pains me to see you suffer. Let me help you.” 

The repetition of the line gives Nachash pause. The sincerity of the Cherub, the sincere offer of help that may hurt Iseraphil, warms the core of Nachash’s Grace. The love flows from the Seraph’s being, slowly at first, then enough to manifest the six wings of the Order of Seraphim. The Seraph hums in delight, a high note of joy which reverberates through the wings, sustaining them further. Then, to the Seraph’s great surprise, the Cherub joins the tune. Their voices mix, the beautiful, worshipful notes of the Seraphim and the gentle, steady hum of the Cherubim. Though the choirs of the Orders of Cherubim and Seraphim are by design complimentary, the song of Iseraphil and Nachash is truly wonderful to behold. 

It builds to a steady crescendo, both beings spreading their love around one another, nurturing Nachash’s Grace into a stronger, brighter presence. Finally, the Seraph’s faith escapes in a glorious shining. Iseraphil does not release the curls of Grace that the Cherub has wrapped around the Seraph’s being. Instead, the lesser angel clutches tighter, pulling Nachash’s Grace towards the light. 

The Seraph’s joy is great, but when Nachash can see that the renewed Grace does the Cherub no harm, it knows no bounds. With a short cry of joy, the wings of his being wrap themselves around the Cherub, bringing the two brothers as close together as their celestial forms allow. Their song retreats to a low hum, the intertwining of two melodies lapping against one another. 

“You're not hurt?” Nachash asks, still concerned for the Cherub who has aided the Seraph. 

“No." Iseraphil’s own Grace is much grown, and Nachash admires the glow of faith and love that it has brought the Cherub. 

“Alright. Thanks. I owe you one.”

Iseraphil says nothing. The Cherub simply shakes out his wings from the embrace, and turns away.

"Go back to your Order, Seraph." Iseraphil says. Nachash goes. 

\--

Iseraphil had not expected to see Nachash again. By now, they have both been given humanoid forms, and their beings are no longer made of light and Grace. 

Nachash's six wings are white, standing in stark contrast against his dark skin and hair. He smiles, and his golden eyes are warm with affection. He has high cheekbones, and a slim figure. He looks strong and healthy. 

"Iseraphil." He greets. The Cherub meets him happily, glad to see that his brother's Grace is still intact. Yet again, his new vision is not blinded as Cherubim should be by the Seraphim. He does not think to question it; the Lord has made it so. He does not question why Nachash alone of the Seraphim is able to leave his post by the side of his God. 

The two Angels stand together at the edge of heaven, looking out across the void into infinity. It will soon be filled, by God’s will, and the Lord will create the Earth. 

“Watch the Creation here with me, Iseraphil.” Nachash says, and Iseraphil agrees to. 

Iseraphil and Nachash watch God create light, and the earth, the animals, and humanity. They sing praise through to the seventh day of Creation, when God rests. They look down on Eden, and at last, their song of praise falls silent as they stare in wonder at His creation. 

—

There are angels in Eden. They are looking after Man and Woman. 

Iseraphil and Nachash are talking by the Eastern gate, testing out the new voices that they have been given to use on the Earth. 

"Adam and Eve haven't heard you sing with the other Seraphim." Iseraphil observes. Nachash smiles, and shrugs one shoulder, his attention held by a bird attempting to nest in his hair. He reaches a hand up towards it, and it flaps away, trilling. 

"I'm not exactly like the other Seraphim." He points out. It's a valid point. He smirks, and says grandly, "The Lord allows me to walk among the animals of Eden." Iseraphil 'tsks' at him, fondly. 

"I can't believe they don't miss you though. Doesn't the choir sound strange with a voice missing?" He doesn't get an answer. 

Nachash sings a new note, and Iseraphil watches, wondering, as the birds gathered in the nearby bushes imitate it. The original note gets lost in the resultant cacophony, and the two angels laugh. Iseraphil's is bright and cheerful, Nachash's low and amused. 

"They like your voice." He says, and Nachash smiles. 

"Yeah, well. They can't make that sort of note themselves." He sounds smug, a little pleased. His grey eyes flash in the bright sunlight. 

Iseraphil thinks about that for a minute. He is smaller than Nachash, and he kneels beside him, close to God's creatures. His golden hair lies in neat ringlets about his head, the same bright colour as the edging on his four wings. Though he is not slim, or well-built, or strong like the Seraph, he glows with Grace and good health, and his bright blue eyes shine with joy. He stretches a pale hand towards a nearby bird, a little, skittish black creature, which hops happily onto his wrist and trills in his ear. Iseraphil laughs in delight.

"No. But they sing beautifully all the same.” 

—

Iseraphil is fascinated by all of God’s creations, and loves them all equally. So does Nachash, technically, but he finds himself more and more interested in one particular species as the days go by. He can’t help but be drawn back to the humans again and again. It doesn’t help that Aziraphale is quite happy to watch with him, claiming that the more time they spend with the humans, the more they can learn about them. 

“They’re just so different from us, and yet they're more similar to angels than any of the other animals.” He confesses to Iseraphil. The Cherub is lying beside him on the thick, luscious grass, enjoying the warmth of the sun. 

“They were made from God’s own body.”

“So were we, so I guess that explains the similarity, but how come we ended up with so many differences too?” Iseraphil flutters his wings a little, obviously agitated by the line of questioning. “It’s just hard to love them all equally when they are all so diverse.” Nachash tries to explain, but then realises how it sounds and tries again. “I don’t mean equally, exactly, but in the same way. Loving them all the same amount is hard, when you have a different kind of love for all of them, don’t you see?” 

Iseraphil is blinking at him, trying to vanish the last of the relaxed haze from his eyes. It’s something Nachash has watched Eve do a hundred times, and the parallel startles him. 

“...no.” The other angel admits, looking somewhat confused. Nachash sighs, and tips away from the grassy hillock he has been lying on on his stomach to land beside Iseraphil and look at him properly. 

“Can you tell me honestly that you love me or any of the other angels in exactly the same way that you love…” he glances around the garden for inspiration, “...the birds, and the bees, and even the humans?” 

The cherub’s confused expression vanishes, replaced by one of absolute, shining certainty, and Nachash’s heart sinks, though he can’t fully understand why. 

“Of course! I love you all as God’s creations!”

The Seraph sighs. 

“You’ve missed the point.”

“Then what is the point?” The angel is so earnest, so desperate to understand, that Nachash can’t bear to look at him. 

He turns his face away. He is so desperately disappointed that this one thing, this most important thought which has been on his mind for such a long time, is the one thing that Iseraphil cannot understand. They have never really been similar, but their differences of opinion and attitude have never bothered him much. 

Iseraphil is an angel, and Nachash is his brother, his family. Yet the Cherub doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that Nachash loves the angels more than he loves the humans, never mind God’s orders, never mind how fascinating he finds Adam and Eve, never mind how he wishes them to enjoy their gift of life and his Father’s Eden. It’s irrelevant. It might not even be that he loves them less, but that he loves them in a different way. 

It’s like loving God and loving the angels. His love for his Father is deep-set within him, a constant pleasant ache of faith and joy. It is nothing at all like the passion he has for the other angels, his constant burning desire to be aware of their presence and their welfare—Iseraphil especially. 

It is no different than that. He tries explaining this to Iseraphil, who just gives him a strange look. His blue eyes glitter in the sunlight, bluer than the sky, and full of a joyous vivacity that the sky will never have. It seems wrong to have them dimmed by confusion, and what might be just a hint of suspicion. 

“But the Lord is our Father. Nothing can match our love for Him.”

“I know, and that’s what I mean. My love for humanity will never match my love for you, my brethren.”

Iseraphil looks scared, now, and his wings are vibrating with nervousness. 

“Please, Nachash, don’t talk like that.” He closes his eyes and looks away, his shoulders taught with tension, his knees curled up towards his bare stomach. 

Nachash looks down too, a sudden sadness infecting him with such vigour that even the sun cannot warm him. 

“Alright. I’m sorry, Iseraphil.” I’m sorry that you don’t understand.


	2. Tabula Rasa

It’s been 6000 years, two months, and five days since the Earth was born. It’s been 6000 years, two months, and two days since Humanity was born. Crowley was cast down before time truly began, when the humans walked out of Eden and never looked back. Yet he still does not remember his name. Not his current name, the one he acquired in Hell after the fall, but his given name. He was born with the name of an angel, and it is gone, along with his Grace. The rest of the fallen have never spoken about it, not openly, but he knows that none of them remember their true names either. 

Some of them know abstractly who they were, have heard from angels, perhaps, what they used to be known as, but it means next to nothing. When he was younger, before the agreement, he had had the misfortune of watching as Lilith heard her angelic name. Not even a flicker of recognition was sparked within her, only Wrath and Envy. Now, Lilith has a thousand names, and even he cannot remember which is truly hers. All that remains is the wildness in her eyes, the desperation and bitterness, and the mad howl of a screech owl. If Crowley had a heart, that would have broken it. 

He wonders, sometimes, if they still remember him in heaven, or whether the fall wiped his identity from the universe completely. The loss of his name used to bother him a lot more than the loss of his Grace, even more than being kicked out of heaven. The name was who he was, and without it or the memories attached to it, he had to start again, building himself back up from the shell of his being. 

Crowley doesn't even remember heaven. Not... Exactly.

He remembers it as a general, abstract idea, but his memories are indistinct, blurred. It's like needing glasses--or, well, what he imagines needing glasses would be like. The general outline of the memory is there, but he can't focus on it, and often the harder he concentrates, the more detail he loses. All he really remembers is the bright, white blur, and the steady feeling of being cherished.

It's just enough of a memory that sometimes Crowley will wake in the middle of the night, the hollow emptiness throbbing in his chest almost as badly as it did when he first fell from Grace. Every time he thinks of it, he tugs a little at a wound which will never truly heal. He learnt not to thousands of years ago, well before the Arrangement, but recently the dreams have been back. More frequently, he finds himself waking, shuddering, a cold sheen of sweat on his skin. Even when he banishes the physical symptoms, the memories sometimes remain in the back of his mind for days. It's ruining his sleep schedule.

He thinks it's Aziraphale's influence. Not intentionally, of course. No, it's just that the more time he spends with the angel, the more they bother him.

—

"Hello, angel." Aziraphale startles, and whirls around. He throws his sword out in front of him. The blade crackles with fire.

“Cower, foul demon, for thou hast sinned…” He trails off, having been met with the rather innocuous shape before him. “Oh.” The snake glares at him through slitted yellow eyes. The fire sputters and dies in the face of this rather unimpressive adversary. Aziraphale blinks.

"I haven't done anything yet." He (or at least, Aziraphale assumes it’s a he, it’s a bit harder to tell with snakes than humans) complains, and attempts to slither past. He finds his way blocked by a no-longer-flaming-but-still-rather-sharp-looking sword.

“Cower, foul demon…for thou... might sin?” the angel tries again, but finds himself rather stuck. “Uh. Well, you haven't exactly had a chance to yet. I mean, that’s why I’m here. To stop you sinning.” He coughs, embarrassed, and pulls himself upright, using his smiting voice again. He’s so busy concentrating on getting the pitch and tone just right that he doesn’t notice the demon roll his eyes. "You can’t get in and cause trouble if I’m here to guard the gate and stop you.” It’s nowhere near as impressive as the smiting speech he’s been rehearsing for months, but he still feels rather proud that he didn’t stutter. The demon seems entirely unimpressed, much to Aziraphale’s disappointment, and seems to be inspecting his sword instead. Aziraphale wonders if this is the part where he hits him with it or something. He waves it, a little desperately, but it’s a bit heavy and doesn’t move very far at all, so he gives it up. 

"Can you turn that thing on and off at will?" The demon-snake asks, apparently interested. Aziraphale falters. He’s not supposed to say that. 

"Uh... well..." The sword bursts back into flame with an unnecessarily dramatic flare, and the snake recoils. "Not as such." He says, miserably. "It's... Ineffability."

The snake gives him a look which is impressively condescending, especially considering his lack of eyebrows. It must be a snake thing. 

"It means that..." Aziraphale rushes to explain.

"I know what ineffability means.” He interrupts, somewhat startling the angel. "It's just disturbing to think you have no idea how to handle that thing." He gestures to the sword with a deft flick of his tail. Aziraphale looks down at the snake, then back over his shoulder, slightly panicked. This hadn't been covered in his training. This demon doesn’t seem particularly demonic, just rather bored and a little lonely. Why else would he strike up conversation with an angel? Aziraphale desperately wants to take pity on him, but somewhere in the back of his mind is the nagging reminder that he is the guard of the eastern gate of Eden, and this snake is a demon who wants to get in, and Aziraphale cannot let that happen. 

It’s just that the demon doesn’t seem particularly bothered about getting in, to be quite honest. In fact, he’s settled himself quite amicably in a comfortable coil a few metres away. He looks like he’s quite content to stick around for a bit longer. It’s… unnerving. Aziraphale knows exactly what to do with a very threatening demon trying his best to break down the gates and enter, but it feels wrong to stick a flaming sword through a creature that doesn’t seem to pose much of a threat, and has really been much more polite and civil so far than Aziraphale was lead to expect. Mildly unpleasant, perhaps, but he’d been expecting something rather worse. The fire and brimstone seem to be, thankfully, rather lacking. 

"It's the will of God. It is part of his Divine Plan.” He tries, but even to himself, he sounds uncertain, and the snake just smirks at him. Aziraphale gets the distinct feeling that God is testing him, and that he’s not currently doing very well. He fidgets, nervously. 

“Are you saying that we don’t have free will?” His fangs are really rather large, the angel notes, and wonders why he hadn’t noticed before. A forked tongue flickers out between them. The demon hisses. “I don’t anssswer to anyone but myssself. Not even God.” He cants his head and appears to think about that for a second, before adding “esssspecially not him.” 

“Aren’t you under orders right now? You know, from The Great Adversary?” The angel looks confused. The demon seems to relax somewhat. 

“Well, technically I am, but Luci” Aziraphale winces at the nickname, “Was never really one for following the rules, was he? It would be rather hypocritical for him to go about punishing us for being disobedient.” Aziraphale is about to open his mouth and point out to the demon the exact reason why Lucifer fell, but then thinks better of it, and clamps his jaw down. The demon continues, unperturbed, and apparently oblivious to Aziraphale’s sudden internal conflict. “Besssidesss, If I did everything I wasss told then I wouldn't be able to do thissss."

There is a very human, very naked looking demon standing at the eastern gate of Eden. The angel of the eastern gate blinks, disbelievingly, and gives a startled little yelp. The demon smirks.

He is definitely male. 

—

Crowley gets very good at startling the angel. He begins to take great delight in it, in fact. Right up until the point where he pops up while Aziraphale happens to be doing a bit of holy smiting (with his eyes closed and his arms outstretched so he was all the more likely to miss--he was never particularly good at the whole avenging angel thing) and Crowley gets in the way. 

Being stabbed with a little metal arrow is probably one of his most embarassing discorporations. At the hands of an angel who is almost completely incompetent with any weapon, it was all the more humiliating. Painful, too. For such a small thing, it created rather a lot of mess.

“Crowley? Crowley, I really am so sorry my dear, are you alright?” The angel is fussing, his hands flitting over Crowley’s reluctantly prone body without ever actually touching him, for which Crowley is inordinately grateful; Aziraphale is more than a little hairbrained, and seems to have much more difficulty containing his pure faithful essence than Crowley does with his little withered soul, and that would be hellishly painful. 

“Get off me, you bassstard. You just sssshot me.” 

“Oh dear, you’re hissing.” The angel’s tone of mild worry would be rather insulting if it wasn't coupled with an expression of guilt and horror. However, this fact does less than nothing to entreat the demon to the angel who just shot him.

“Of course I’m hissing, do you know how bloody painful it is to be shot with an arrow? Right smack bang in the chest, I swear you’ve done it on purpose, if I didn’t know you better…” 

“You don’t know me at all.” Aziraphale points out, entirely truthfully, with a little hint of confusion. Later, he will blame the obvious stupidity of this line on the fact that he was a little preoccupied. Namely, with the bow string which he had just managed to ping himself with while attempting to offer Crowley assistance.

“Right. The bloody angel who can’t even kill a fly without being practically crippled by guilt just shot me on purpose. Did you bless the bloody thing or something?” Aziraphale opens his mouth to protest, looking a little horrified, but Crowley’s already sitting up. “Bugger this for a lark.” He proclaims, roughly pulling the arrow out, and succeeding in dying less than two minutes later despite his best efforts to heal his corporation.

In hindsight, Crowley is forced to admit that the following few thousand years of animosity may have been a little unnecessary. 

—

“Look who it is!” Crowley exclaims in greeting, “only the bloody angel!” 

Said angel winces. Crowley waves a half-empty mug of something foul and sour smelling at him, which Aziraphale immediately recognises as something alcoholic.

“Must you swear like that?” He admonishes, pushing a stray twist out of his face. It falls straight back into his eyes again, it’s natural bounce damped by sweat. He leaves it hanging there, resigned. Crowley is pleased that he seems less satisfied with his new body than the one he destroyed only a few years ago. 

The new corporation is nothing unusual, not really, but Aziraphale always insists on having bright blue eyes, no matter whether they fit his current ethnicity or not. Secretly, Crowley rather likes that when they worked in similar areas in the earliest days of humanity, the angel was perhaps even more of a sore thumb than he was. Yellow eyes, after all, are closer to the natural deep chocolate brown of the humans than the bright, opalescent blue of Aziraphale’s stubborn irises. 

That is really the reason they’re here. 

“Ha. It’s usually me that gets chased away from places because they think I’m some kind of malevolent spirit.” It does wonders for his soul to get a chance to crow over the angel’s misfortunes, especially when they’re self-inflicted. He takes another cheerful swig of mead from what might have charitably been called his cup.

“You are a malevolent spirit.” Aziraphale points out grumpily, stalking past the tipsy demon. Where he’s heading seems to be something of a moot point; all the demon can see for miles around is red dust and horizon. 

“I am not. I am a demon.”

“Close enough. Besides, you came all the way from India, presumably just to gloat at my situation. You’re certainly not here to offer me any assistance.”

“I did indeed, and no I’m not.” He sounds cheerful, pleased with himself. 

“Malevolent.” Aziraphale mutters under his breath. “I am not malevolent. I was just trying to help, and what do I get for it? Kicked out, disgraced, my hut burned to the ground.” He kicks at a stone in the path, and stubs his toe. Crowley laughs at him, unashamedly, and with all the cruel and simple humour of the inebriated. Aziraphale stoically ignores him and continues on his way, forcing the demon to catch up so that he can continue to gloat.

The angel is slumped over in the kind of stance that suggests if there had been any pockets in the rather skimpy traditional belts that are slung low across the angel’s dark skin then his hands would be shoved into them. 

“Missing India, then?” He asks sweetly, and the angel sighs. 

“Not really. It’s the Middle East I really miss. Do you know how long it’s been since I went to Jerusalem?” Staring wistfully up at the hazy blue sky seems a little overdramatic, really, but he’s past the point of complaining. “They really know what to do with their wine. You know they don’t even have proper alcohol out here yet?”

“Heathens are so depressing.” Crowley agrees, amicably, smiling unnecessarily wide and swilling the liquid in his mug. “This sort of stuff doesn’t seem to suit you nearly as much as when you were running around healing everyone, I must admit. I almost miss your vivacity, even though it does mean I end up downstairs more often. They admire your enthusiasm Down There, you know.” Aziraphale sighs, forlorn. 

“Nobody forced you to go and discorporate me.” He points out sulkily, still pointedly refusing to look at the demon who is now matching him step for step as they march out across the dry, deserted land in the general direction of nowhere in particular. 

Crowley sighs. 

“You’re not even listening to me.”

“Oh go away, Crowley.”

—

Aziraphale was not cut out to be a Principality. To be honest, he wasn’t really cut out to be a Cherubim, either, but at least he had a script to follow then. Trying to guard and protect the entire population of the earth is considerably harder work than he had anticipated. 

“Do not be afraid,” He says, offering his hand to the poor leper woman curled in the gutter. “I am here to help.” The woman glances up at him, screams, and stumbles to her feet, trying to pull away from the angel’s careful grasp on her wrist. 

“Let go of me!” She cries, horrified. “I’m a leper, are you insane?” Aziraphale sighs, and tightens his grip. She stops struggling, and glares at him, mutinously. “You are. Fine then. Don’t come running to me when your limbs start falling off.” She gives a little sob, and collapses against the back wall of the crumbling temple she has been sheltering behind. 

“My good woman…” The angel begins, but he can’t make himself heard through the tears. 

He sighs. This always seems to happen. He’ll just have to do this the hard way. Again. He glances around, and notices that there’s only one other person in the alleyway. That will have to do. 

He starts carefully, aware that too much will blind her, and that is not the aim of this. His Grace fills his vessel, and emanates out in a gentle glow. The wings and the halo, on second thoughts, may have been a bit far, but the woman’s faith needed a little helping hand. 

Unfortunately, the sudden increased sensitivity means that he's acutely aware of the fact that the other figure in the alleyway isn't entirely human. The demon's aura irritates him, like an itch that needs scratching. It's infuriating. Especially considering how it takes only a fraction of a second longer to distinguish the familiarity of one demon in particular. Fortunately for him, Crowley's content to watch from a distance, and Aziraphale has a job to do, from which he will not be distracted.

Her eyes are wide and gaping, her tears drying on her cheeks. With his grace out, her thoughts filter through to him without him even trying. Her reaction is fairly run of the mill. Angel, fear, God, love, hope. He smiles, and the last of her fear fades. 

“Can you… can you heal me?” She asks, and his heart sinks. 

“I cannot gift you with something which only God can bestow. I am a messenger of his word. You have been good, and faithful, and there shall be a place for you in heaven when your time on earth is complete.” 

“Heaven?” She whispers, and he can see the hope in her eyes, can feel it in her mind. “Will I be whole in heaven?”

“You are whole now. The brightness of your soul is greater than the tarnish on your skin. Retain faith, and the Lord shall be with you.” The woman is smiling, slightly blissfully. 

“I won’t be a leper. There’s no bodies in heaven. I’ll be… ” 

“Incorporeal?” He supplies, warily. She smiles up at him, her eyes shining with tears. 

“Yes. Yes. Thank you, angel. I always believed God loves me. I always thought…” She sniffles, and wipes her nose with her grubby sleeve. Aziraphale tries not to wince. “I won’t be a leper. I won’t be ill. I won’t be a disease or a burden or…” She starts crying in earnest. 

Aziraphale hesitates. That wasn’t exactly the point he was trying to make. 

“You are perfect in the eyes of God.” He tries, a little desperately. “He loves all his children, no matter what form they take.”

She reaches up to him, and clutches at his hands. He freezes, unsure of himself. Nobody’s ever dared touch him while he’s glowing before. This woman seems impervious; she strokes his hands reverentially. 

“I touched an angel. God loves me. I’m going to heaven. I ain’t going to be a leper. I’m just going to be me, and I’m going to be happy.” She sniffles again, and then stands, her weak legs raising her out of the gutter. Her eyes are red, her cheeks streaked with tears, but her grip is strong and firm. Aziraphale can sense her faith within her growing strong. It no longer wavers. It fills the deep well of hopelessness, and gives her joy. “Thank you.” She whispers, blesses him (entirely unnecessary, he thinks, but appreciated all the same), and shuffles away.

He watches her go with a growing sense of unease. He’s not quite sure why, but he feels as if he has failed somewhere. His Grace fades, slowly, the wings tucked back into the dimension they belong in, the halo dissipated into the ether. 

“Why don’t you heal them?” A voice behind him says. His Grace now contained once again, Aziraphale had missed his approach, and jumps at the intrusion. The demon smirks a little to see it, but it fades as the angel turns to him, sword in hand. Crowley eyes it warily. They haven’t had a conversation without it for seven centuries, but despite his careful wheedling, the angel still seems to deem it necessary. It’s not the original (unless Aziraphale had done something probably illegal) but it’s a blessed blade, and it can do him a hell of a lot of damage.

“It is not the will of God to do so. It is serving their selfish whims.” Aziraphale says. He no longer says it with a waver in his conviction, but neither does he sound convinced. Instead, he’s resigned to it, and he turns his back to the demon to watch as the woman stumbles away from him, out onto the main street of Jerusalem, where the crowds veer away from her every move. 

“That makes no sense. Do you have no idea how humans work, angel? If you’d healed her, then she would have run off screaming praise to God, and converted a hundred of her friends in the process. Now, she’ll just…” he stops.

“Just what?” Aziraphale turns, sees the sadness in the demon’s eyes, and is surprised by it. “What will she do?” 

The demon shakes his head, and walks away. 

Two weeks later, the news reaches him. 

Suicide. 

__

 

Forty years later, they are no longer even on speaking terms. Here is how it happened: 

Crowley’s being haunted by his nightmares again. Ever since the incident with the woman, he’s been showing Aziraphale how humans work. Not that the angel is aware, of course, and not that he’d ever admit it, but it’s the unbelievable truth. They have been working in the same areas, meeting with increasing regularity, and what began as a passive sort of agreement that they wouldn’t go directly against each other unless jobs or orders dictated has evolved into a reluctant sort of (ugh, Crowley doesn’t even want to think about it) friendship. 

They should have known better; it was doomed from the start. 

Crowley likes sleeping. It’s the perfect way to fill his Sloth quota, and is actually surprisingly enjoyable. That is, when the angel isn’t around to screw things up. 

The demon growls and rolls over, pulling the covers over his head. Heaven. His sleep is filled with indiscernible faded half-memories of heaven. It’s a torture worse than any demon could devise. They’re an unimaginative lot, admittedly, but this is something he’s never had to suffer in Hell. It’s possibly the only thing that could ever make him want to go back. 

“Crowley.” 

With a final sigh of defeat, he throws back the covers and glares, yellow eyes burning, at the angel who has dared to enter his domain uninvited. Aziraphale’s expression is worried, and here, where there is no chance of being caught by any human beings, his grip on his Grace is beginning to slip. It shines through his skin. It's hurting Crowley’s eyes, unprotected by a glamour which is unnecessary in the angel's presence.

It’s the final straw. 

“No. Go away.” Aziraphale hesitates, confused by the sudden plateau of dark skin he has been presented as the demon rolls over and away from him. 

“Crowley?” Silence. “Crowley please, I need your help, I…”

“No.” It’s clear and sharp, despite the fact that the demon’s head is buried as far into the pillow as he can get. 

“Crowley, please. People will die…” 

“So what? They’ll die, then they go to Heaven or Hell. That’s the part we should be bothered about, angel. Humans die, and that’s it. Okay? Nothing we can do about it. Inevitable. Ineffable, even. You’ve told me a hundred times. Now bugger off.” 

Silence. He knows it’s the wrong thing to say. Aziraphale may be stubbornly resilient to new ideas, but forty years is long enough for him to realise that Crowley genuinely likes humanity, and does, in fact, care very much whether they live or die. They are also both acutely aware that he is very, very good at hiding it. And damn him, but Aziraphale is an angel, and they are the most perceptive beings in the universe. 

“Something’s wrong.” 

“You’re disturbing my sleep.”

“No, no, that’s not it. You’re not happy. You feel…” He stops confused. “But… you’re a demon.” He says to himself, as if trying to remind himself of the fact. “You aren’t supposed to be able to feel…”

“Fallen angel.” He corrects, quietly. The silence after the statement hangs heavy and humid with the weight of the knowledge he has just handed to his nemesis. 

“Crowley, my dear…” Aziraphale starts, but chokes down the sentence. “I never realised. I thought you were…"

“What?” He asks, bitterly. 

“I… well. I’m not sure really. I never gave it much thought. An incubus, or something, I suppose.” Crowley laughs, short and flat. 

“I should probably be flattered.”

“I’m truly sorry, my dear. I didn’t realise you were suffering from such hauntings from your past…” The demon--fallen angel--freezes. 

The presence of the angel in his mind is something he has grown used to in the years of their acquaintance. It's just something Aziraphale does, and something Crowley has had plenty of experience of. Usually it's not an issue, because he's good at concealing things, but right now he's projecting more strongly than he can damp down.

“Stop.” Crowley’s voice is hoarse with dawning horror. Aziraphale does not notice. 

“I wish I could do something to help you, my dear…”

“No!” 

The force behind the command expels Aziraphale from the room completely, slamming him through the door to land in a pile of shattered wood and planks. With a soft cry of surprise, the angel immediately goes about healing his body, wary of being discorporated. Crowley doesn’t care. He’s incensed, far beyond the boundaries of Wrath, into the realm of completely and utterly insatiable bloodlust. He slithers across the floor, his black, slick scales warm against the cool wooden boards, his stark-white fangs as starkly different from his scale as his teeth where against his rich, earth-coloured skin in human form. 

“Leave me alone.” He bites. 

He gets a commendation, his first for discorporating the Principality since what will come to be known as 3078 BC, and they never speak of the incident again. When the Arrangement finally comes into being after several similar setacks of varying proportions, the first two clauses are these: 1. No discorporation, and 2. No mind-reading. There are no exceptions. 

—

Aziraphale enjoys being a Principality most of the time. The humans are fascinating, creative and intuitive, and he follows their progress through time with a sort of detached astonishment. He helps the Egyptians make the first papyrus paper, he talks to the engineers who built the pyramids about complex mathematics, and does his best to ignore the thousands of pagan gods they worship. Then he meets Crowley, and they fight, and he ends up with a knife in his chest. It's an infuriatingly bad time to become discorporate. 

Before that, he lives in the Indus valley and helps to construct the plans for the first ever sewage systems, until Crowley comes along as a travelling merchant, and just two days later, his house burns to the ground while he's inside it. In Babylon, he talks to the keepers of the hanging gardens and discovers about hundreds of thousands of types of plants, until he has to make a hasty escape in connection to a rather nasty occasion where the collapse of his shed results in a demon discorporation and an incriminating, if misleading, body. 

In Ancient Greece, he talks with Pythagoras and Socrates. In Rome he walks with Caesar and Augustus. He meets Galileo, Mozart, and Da Vinci, though they are often fleeting confluences. He meets Crowley for good wine and careful negotiations, occasional spats, and later on, dinner. He follows invasions and battles, conquests and defeats, the rise and fall of religions and rulers, and the building and destruction of cities and villages. He lives in Tibet with monks, Mongolia with horsemen, Sweden with Vikings, and briefly spends time with tribes in the Amazon rainforest. He spends years sailing with the Polynesians until he grows tired of the sea. He learns the Minoan language until their land is destroyed by a volcano. He scribes for Monks in England before the Angles come, and watches as the Inca civilisation falls at the hands of the Spanish invaders. Then he settles in England, much to Crowley’s dismay. 

Crowley enjoys being on earth too. He finds humanity endlessly entertaining, and all-too-easy to tempt. He lives in Pompeii and Sodom and Babel, despite Aziraphale's best efforts. He meets Boudicca and gets pissed at, and then with, the Romans when they rape her daughters, while Aziraphale is burying their bodies. He travels with Alexander the Great until he gets distracted by the blossoming tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra (and yes, he was that snake, but it was her choice, he didn’t even have to tempt her). At this point, they've agreed to stop trying to kill each other, and Aziraphale doesn’t appear to be bothered by the fact that they actually get along. Crowley is, and finds himself disturbed by the fact that the angel doesn’t bear a grudge. He solves the problem by bearing enough of a grudge for both of them, and managing to avoid Aziraphale for nearly two centuries. He has great fun in Sparta, grateful that the reputation of the place dissuades Aziraphale from visiting and gives him a few decades of peace. A similar tactic worked before that, in Persia, as they prepared their doomed invasion of Greece. 

He finds the gladiators and the Olympics in Rome the most entertaining thing in centuries. Not to mention the wine, the quality of which is one of the first things he and Aziraphale actually agree on. Nero, Caligula and Valerian are good fun, until Atilla the Hun starts getting really interesting and he wanders leisurely over to the other side of Europe, arriving just in time to invade the smoking remnants of the crumbling empire he left behind. Then he discovers the Samurai, the best idea Japan have ever had, but when he visits Aziraphale who seems to have settled in with the Tudors, the angel disapproves, and tries to introduce him to Shakespeare. That doesn’t go particularly well. 

They cross paths with depressing regularity, considering the size of the planet. Aziraphale gets in a snit with Crowley when the Huns wipe out his precious Gupta empire. They both agree to give the Aztecs a bit of a miss after they decide that human sacrifice is this season’s fad. Aziraphale enjoys his time with the Mongols until Crowley gets involved with Genghis Khan, which he does entirely out of spite, and involves him spending several years in the saddle. Aziraphale thinks this is more than enough punishment all by itself. 

Crowley gets bored with the Moorish invaders of Spain when they start doing cultured things like building universities, hospitals and libraries, which he blames entirely on Aziraphale’s influence. They both give Jerusalem a miss during the crusades, just for safety’s sake, though while Aziraphale spends his time in Europe trying to help people during the Black Plague, Crowley is off in Africa, watching the Songhai invading the Mali and enjoying it immensely. Crowley takes credit for the construction of the Berlin Wall and gets a commendation for it. Aziraphale pretends he wasn’t involved when it comes tumbling down. Neither of them will admit that the demon helped him get very drunk the night Crowley received another commendation for the resulting social and economic mess. 

They watch the construction of the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China. Only Aziraphale approves of the Vatican city, and only Crowley seems to enjoy the destruction of Jerusalem several times over. They see a thousand faces and meet a thousand more people, but neither of them ever meet Newton, Columbus or Van Gogh, Luther King, Dickens or Stalin. Though Aziraphale claims to have met Queen Victoria and Crowley will swear blind that he spent a week in the company of Napoleon, the truth of it is that humanity is too busy for either of them too keep up with all at once. 

The worst of it is around 30 A.D, when Aziraphale is tied up chasing around after Jesus, trying to wrap up loose ends and get people to write things down before things get forgotten or miscounted. They do, of course, but even so, Aziraphale seems very proud of himself when he shows Crowley the first ever written copy. The demon takes great delight in pointing out all of the discrepancies, one by one, until the angel kicks him out in a huff just as he gets to the good bit about the angel who comforts Jesus before the day of his crucifixion. 

—

They’ve fallen out again. Crowley has now known Aziraphale for over 4000 years, and they are the only real constants in each other’s lives. By general consensus, the rate at which humanity evolves and the drastic ways in which it changes means that it isn't even considered to be a baseline most of the time.

Their argument is not exactly surprising, all things considered, and nor is it a rarity, but Aziraphale regrets it all the same. Especially when Crowley actually attempts to make it up to him afterwards. He is aware that it may have been his fault that they didn’t manage to rebalance their comfortable impasse. 

To be fair to him though, Crowley did choose the worst possible moment. It’s a rare occasion that Aziraphale bothers to take care of his more extraordinary body parts. He supposes that it comes from not having to bother showering or washing his human form. His angelic limbs, however, are an entirely different matter. 

It’s about 19 AD, and Aziraphale hasn’t bothered 'doing the dusting’, as Crowley so crudely calls it, for a good few decades. Certainly longer than he would like to admit, if asked. It probably would have gone on for longer, if a certain teenaged Jesus Christ that he had been spending a lot of time with recently hadn’t mentioned it at some point. It had flustered him, reminded him that he was no longer the only permanent ethereal being on earth, and spurred him to do something about it. 

Thus, when Crowley walks into the tiny, cramped little upstairs room that Aziraphale has been renting in Galilee for the past 17 years, he finds the angel perched on the end of his straw mattress, with a halo in one hand and a dust rag in the other. It is worth noting, at this point, that while an impasse did, in some ways, constitute an agreement of kinds, it was in no way equal to the Agreement, which later resulted in the two beings spending so much time in each other’s company. Crowley therefore did not know enough about the angel to know about his standards of personal hygiene. It was something of a revelation, you might say. 

“Agh!” He throws an arm up in front of his eyes, and stumbles a few steps back. "What on earth are you doing?” The demon demands, blinded by the bright holy glare leaking between Aziraphale's fingers. The angel, considerably flustered, rolls it up inside the dust rag in a vain attempt to dim its light. He has taken on the horrified expression of the innocent caught in the act of something unsavoury or exposing. He has, over the years, caught Crowley in plenty of such situations, but none have involved the exposure of the rather dusty and dilapidated, and yet fundamental, parts of his being. It's rather like being caught getting into the shower after a particularly sweaty gym session. The little shriek of mortification that he in no way ever pronounces fits best into that category of exclamations.

"Oh goodness, I'm so sorry, my dear, my apologies, I really didn't intend..." He fumbles with his little parcel, completely failing to block it's light from blinding his companion. "I'm so sorry!"

"Just... for crying out loud, can't you put it somewhere else for a minute while I try and talk to you?" This entire speech is somewhat muffled, despite the venom of the words; they are delivered from behind his arms, currently shielding his eyes from the worst of the glare.

It doesn’t go very well after that. Aziraphale is flustered and embarrassed, and Crowley is seriously pissed off. It’s quite difficult to reconcile with an angel when you’ve just been very harshly reminded of why it’s not a good idea to hang around with them.

—

Aziraphale likes Jesus. When he’s not busy being the Son of God and running around telling complicated parables and healing people, he’s a nice guy. He was born mortal, of course, which is unfortunate in some respects, but also means that Aziraphale has someone to commiserate with over how absolutely fascinating humans are. They have grown close over the years. Aziraphale helps Jesus when he needs it, offers him advice and knowledge, and listens to the parables before he tells them. They know each other well, and apart from Crowley, Jesus is the only one who is able to understand Aziraphale’s fondness for humanity. He loves them too, more than the other angels could possibly imagine, and that is why they are here. 

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sits below a wilting pine tree, looking tired and wrought. They both know what will happen to him here, of course, and it breaks Aziraphale's heart to see the man like this. He has been praying, but it has done little to comfort him. 

“Aziraphale.” Jesus greets, as the angel approaches. The angel remains silent, but sits by his side. He understands, perhaps better than anyone, what Christ is going through. 

“I do not know what to think.” He says, and Aziraphale smiles, though it is because he understands, not because he is happy. “I am to die tomorrow, if all goes as expected. The idea scares me.” They sit in silence for a minute longer. “I could walk away. Judas will come, but they will not find me.”

“But you won’t?”

“No.” It’s a decisive statement. All at once, he seems incredibly brave, and yet also defeated. "My Father needs me to do this. Humanity needs me to do this.” 

Aziraphale embraces the young man, even though there is a lump in the back of his throat and tears stinging in his eyes. Nowadays, Aziraphale has much better control over his Grace, and it’s a very conscious decision to allow the manifestation of his wings and the glow it brings him. Jesus digs his hands amongst the feathers and breathes the angel’s aura in deeply, reminding himself of why he’s doing this. 

When he prays again, as they sit together, Aziraphale wraps his wings around the Son of God, gently pouring the strength that he needs back into his bones. 

Jesus makes him promise not to come to the crucifixion before he leaves. Aziraphale obeys, even though they both know that he will not truly die. Even so, Jesus wishes to spare whoever he can the pain of seeing him executed. He is the only angel that does not watch. However, he does not escape it completely--he feels the horror of it ripple through heaven. There is a deep sadness hanging over the world for three days, and Aziraphale copes with it as he does any other loss; he ignores it, and gets on with his job. 

—

The thing about being present throughout so much of history is that it’s considerably harder to keep a low profile over a hundred thousand lifetimes than it is over a single one. There is a veritable museum of statues, paintings and scrolls which feature one or the other of them, in whatever their current corporation happened to be. There is even one which Crowley claims features both of them, but he refuses to disclose it’s whereabouts to Aziraphale. This is because it’s in a box under his bed in his flat, guarded by several sigils, of both an occult and ethereal nature. It depicts them in the midst of one of their earlier battles, and the reason he refuses to show the angel is that Aziraphale appears to be winning. 

It was also done by a Greek, and therefore they are also both naked, and while Aziraphale would probably be rather flattered, Crowley was mildly insulted, and had to school himself into not strangling the sculptor, because that would have been too suspicious considering that he was already creeping through his house in the middle of the night with a recently stolen statuette in his hand.

Aziraphale and Crowley are both in the Bible and it’s accompanying texts several times over, though both are rather miffed that their most influential achievements are left out of nearly all prints (with the single exception of verses 24-27 in The Buggre All This Bible, which Crowley is still sour about). Even so, Aziraphale feels like this is a rather measly thanks. Not that he has much right to complain. He put many years of work into ensuring that almost no mention of the 33 years he spent with Christ are mentioned, though this resulted in a rather large gap of eighteen years of Jesus’ life which has frustrated scholars for centuries. Crowley maintains that the common people forced to sit through Mass are thankful that Aziraphale managed to reduce the Bible by about half it’s original size, however much it pained him to do so. 

Either way, the most interesting text, by far, is The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. 

 

—

On the 21st October, 1996 A.D, at 9:00 am, Aziraphale gets hit by a car outside his bookshop. It’s an incredible way to mark the 6000th anniversary of the birth of the Earth. Crowley is not pleased that he’s spending the best part of his day trying to persuade the doctors that the blessed angel really doesn’t need any help, honestly, he’s fine. 

It doesn’t help the doctor’s private reservations about Crowley’s sociopathic or possibly psychopathic tendencies that Aziraphale genuinely does seem to have taken a bash to the head. When the demon is finally allowed to see him, the angel is in too much of a state to have healed himself. He nurses three broken ribs and a fractured wrist, which Crowley deftly sorts out with a wave of his hand. He follows this up with an impressive large-scale memory modification of at least 40 hospital staff, deletes all the files on the case, and drags the confused angel out of the hospital and into his flat. 

Where he sits on the sofa, clutching his head and complaining of dizziness, no matter how many times Crowley attempts to remove a concussion that simply isn’t there. 

“Angel, there is nothing wrong with you. Apart from your spare tyre” (he feels safe pointing this out, knowing that Aziraphale is touchy about it and it’s a sore spot for his pride) “you’re in perfect health.”

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a car.” The angel bemoans, and the demon has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. It’s a rather pointless notion, considering the sunglasses. 

“That’s because you have.” He points out, but Aziraphale isn’t listening. At least, he doesn’t think he is.

The angel’s eyes are focused inwards, and he keeps muttering to himself. Even to Crowley’s enhanced hearing, the wording is beyond him. He assumes it’s Enochian. 

Occasionally, Aziraphale will hum a note, or smile, but every now and then he whispers “No. No.” In a voice of dawning horror which terrifies him in some completely inexplicable way. It’s as if he is dreaming, though fully awake. It’s disconcerting, to say the least. He’s not sure if it’s because the angel he has known for 6000 years is babbling like a lunatic, or that he has no control over the situation, but either way, he’s not enjoying this experience. 

Aziraphale is curled up on the sofa, his arms wrapped around his knees, trembling. Carefully, Crowley reaches over and taps his arm, hoping to get a reaction. Aziraphale’s blue eyes remain focused, unseeing, on his knees. Crowley tries again, poking a little harder, and then shaking the angel, but to no avail. Even shouting elicits no response. He sits back, defeated, as the now-silent angel curls up quietly. A pair of wings suddenly snap into existence and wrap themselves around Aziraphale’s trembling form. Crowley flinches back, and accidentally kicks the angel in the process. 

“Ah, Crowley, my dear.” Aziraphale says, perfectly lucid. The demon screeches, and falls off the sofa. Aziraphale takes no notice as he climbs back to his feet, seething. “I don’t suppose you’d do me a favour would you?” The wings are out, no longer wrapped around him but stretched uncomfortably across the back of the white leather sofa. They don’t quite fit there; they span too wide. 

Crowley notes to his fascination that in the perhaps twelve or thirteen hundred years since he has last seen Aziraphale’s wings manifested, they have dulled from the perfect, brilliant white to a dusty sort of grey, a good few shades darker than his pristine sofas. It’s a very odd moment to have such a revelation. 

He blinks, completely unnecessarily. It doesn’t make him feel any better. Neither does breathing deeply, holding his breath and counting to ten, or swallowing. 

“Oh, no, by all means,” he says, starting slowly, but gathering momentum. 

He may specialise in tempting others to sin, but he’s admirably good at them himself, and this is the perfect opportunity to practice some good old-fashioned Wrath. 

"Of course, I’m more than willing to tend to your every whim after rescuing you from a human hospital, which, by the way, is going on your budget, not mine, healing you because you were too damn out of it to do it yourself, which, I’d like to point out, was entirely your fault for not having the sense to get out of the way of a bloody car in the first place, and then having nothing to do but sit here and watch as you had some kind of fit of insanity. Yes, Aziraphale, I’m more than willing to give you a hand.” He’s been reduced to growling, but he’s been doing admirably well at containing the hissing until the angel turns to face him. 

The condescending look he gives the demon breaks the very last of the nerves that the angel has been getting on all blessed day. “I’m more than happy to just throw away my valuable time to sssave your blessed ssssskin, you ungrateful basssstard.” 

They sit in silence for a second. 

“Are you quite finished?” He asks, sniffily. Crowley reminds himself that disincorporating the angel would a) be violating the conditions of the Agreement, and b) while momentarily satisfying, more of a nuisance in the long run. 

“No.” 

“Good. Well, if you’ll allow me to explain…” 

“…why you allowed yourself to be run over by a bloody car in the first place…”

“… why heaven found it necessary to make it appear as if I had been hit by a car…” 

“… so I had to use up all my energy getting you out of hospital, which I am now going to have to exp…. wait, what?” 

“Oh, so you were listening. I’m so grateful.” Crowley takes a sudden seat. His knees giving out underneath him has nothing to do with the fierce glare the angel has fixed him with, but the sudden revelation that something incredibly serious has happened. 

“Explain.” It’s a short, sharp demand, delivered in a tone that warrants no arguing. 

“Do you remember,” the angel begins, “Just before 3000 BC, when you were having those dreams about heaven?” Crowley winces, unprepared for the rude reminder of an unpleasant period of time. A nod suffices as an affirmation. Aziraphale pauses, as if unsure of how to phrase his next sentence. 

“I’m not entirely sure whether it’s still the case, but… you were locked out of your memories from before you fell. Is that still…”

“Yes.” The interruption is quick, stopping him in his tracks. He has a feeling that Crowley did that on purpose. 

“I thought so.” Aziraphale nods, slowly. "Me too, dear. Not of heaven overall, and not anymore, but until very very recently, my first memory was of being told to guard the eastern gate.”

“But not anymore?”

Aziraphale takes a deep breath. Crowley resents his flair for the dramatic. The pause is entirely unnecessary. 

“That’s what happened. They gave me my memories back.”

\--

Aziraphale remembers heaven before the fall. He remembers being Iseraphil, the Cherub, then being assigned the gate, and being assigned the name Aziraphale along with it. He remembers the war, he remembers Crowley falling, and he remembers the time before, when Crowley wasn't Crowley, even before he was Crawly, the serpent of Eden. He remembers the Seraph. 

Aziraphale remembers everything. He remembers Nachash’s six glorious wings when they were whiter than fresh snowfall and shone with Grace. He remembers when his eyes were a soft, gentle grey and his entire being shone with divine light. He remembers when his smile was pure joy, and he would smile at Aziraphale for simply being. He remembers that they used to sing together, and talk together, walk through Eden together, wondering at the flowers and the life that they found there. He remembers the joy of his company, and he knows that of all his brothers, Iseraphil loved Nachash the best. He knows now why that was frowned upon, something the naive Iseraphil had never been able to understand, his trust in heaven whole and complete. So unlike Crowley, even then. 

He remembers the hollowness in his chest when his companion fell that no love of God could ever refill, and the terrible horror that came from the realisation that he had a love greater than that for God himself. 

The demotion, he thinks, was the worst part. It wasn’t a fall, not all the way, but it was a definite slip downwards, and it hurt like… well, hell. It was the wings, see. A Cherubim has four. A Principality has need for only two. It wasn’t painful in a way that any human would understand, but he had lost part of his soul, part of his being. It had been torn from him. It was like losing a limb, but more than that. The kind of loss that left an irreplaceable hole in him. He imagines it must be something of what Crowley feels too, but far less severe. Against his will, that thought dredges up a terrible pity for the demon, something he knows he must keep to himself. 

He remembers the reassignment of his name, though he never knew at the time that that was what it was. Suddenly, the command of “Aziraphale, you shall guard the Eastern gate of Eden” takes on a lot more meaning, because until just moments before, he had been Iseraphil. 

It is not in an angel’s nature to cast blame, but Aziraphale finds himself wondering why he gave the sword to Eve out of pity when God had chased them out of his garden to starve. He sometimes wonders if it was because he knew the numb pain that comes from having lost something—someone—dear and precious, that you considered to be part of yourself, or your world. 

He wonders if Crowley was right, and if there ever was a Divine Plan after all. 

—

Crowley stares at him, mute, shocked into silence. 

“Why?” He asks. Aziraphale shrugs. 

“I’m being closely monitored. I have been ever since… well, you know.” Crowley does. “They know that I’m angel enough to be programmed to follow orders. But they also know I’m human enough to disobey if need be. This is a punishment.”

The demon looks confused, and Aziraphale rushes to explain. 

“They know what I know, and I remember what was inside your head that night. More than anything, you wanted your name and your memories back, and you were hopeful that I could give them to you, but you wouldn’t ask. You were angry, and I’m not sure why, but you were denying yourself… I don’t understand. Why did you not want to ask me?”

“It doesn’t matter. You didn’t know anyway.”

“But I do now, and I’m under orders not to give them to you.”

“What? How the bloody… how is that a punishment for you?"

“I have to obey. I’m an angel. But I have free will, and they know that I know that if you, for whatever reason, do want to know, and that if you ask me to tell you, then I am perfectly capable of doing so. Either way, we have to deal with the fallout.”

“Right. Fine, that's actually fairly devious of them. But I don’t understand why they would give them to you and specifically order you not to tell me.”

Aziraphale gives him a look that Crowley has only ever seen him use twice in his entire life. As an angel, he’s accustomed to being smarter than everyone else in the room—everyone on the planet, really, excluding Crowley, of course—but he has patience in abundance when it comes to stupidity. Crowley is used to a small sigh, and the angel to begin, “Well you see, my dear…”. 

Instead, he gets the kind of glare that might once have been a predecessor to swords and both of them crawling away to lick their wounds—literally, in Crowley’s case. It says, in no uncertain terms, that Aziraphale really expected better of him. In fact, it’s quite clear that the fact that Crowley just doesn’t get it seems to have made him madder than the incident itself. 

If he thought about it, he might have realised that the sudden flare of irritation (he daren’t call it wrath) was in fact an outlet for the angel’s frustration at the entire situation. Unfortunately, he’s currently a little preoccupied by the fact that both previous times Aziraphale looked at him like that, he had ended up discorporate. 

“Apple.” The angel practically hisses, under his breath and between clenched teeth, sounding so much like a demon himself that Crowley suddenly feels a lot more at home with the entire situation. Which is entirely ridiculous, when he thinks about it. Not that demons are in the habit of hissing seemly irrelevant obscurities like “apple”, of all things…

Oh. OH. 

“I’m supposed to tempt you into giving me my memories back?”

It seems to make sense, in a horrifically poetic way. Aziraphale has something he wants to do (even if it’s assumedly on Crowley’s behalf), which he is forbidden to do, and which Crowley is supposed to persuade him into. Sneaky bastards; they’re more imaginative than he gave them credit for. Not as clever though, if he’s right about this...

“It’s Eden all over again.” Aziraphale confirms. He is absolutely seething, something Crowley hasn’t seen for a very, very long time.

“No it’s not. It’s just pointless.” He turns away, bitter with frustration he’s trying to disguise. “You can tell me my first name as many times as you like, it’s not going to do anything for me.” 

There’s a hint of something in his voice, something Aziraphale recognises, but can’t quite identify. It feels like… fear? Never has Aziraphale wanted to break the Agreement more than at that moment. If he could just see, if he could just understand what the demon is so afraid of… and then he does. The realisation hits him suddenly, like a lead weight, and knocks the breath out of him.

“You’re not going to end up like Lilith.” He says, as gently as he dares. Crowley is not a fan of being patronised, but even Aziraphale can see that this is not the time to be blunt. Nevertheless, the statement shocks the demon, who certainly does not remember having told Aziraphale about that whole mess. “I won’t just be giving you your name back, dear. It’s all your memories too.”

All the fear vanishes from the demon’s face, replaced with incredulity. Then slowly, as he realises that Aziraphale has no reason to lie, he looks up with a wide-eyed, vulnerable and desperate hope which Aziraphale has never seen before. It looks painfully strong. 

“You can do that?” He asks, quietly. 

“Apparently.” The affirmation is gentle, deliberately so. Crowley either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. 

They sit in silence for a while as the demon stews in his thoughts. He is obviously still suspicious. 

“Prove it.” He demands.

There is silence. Aziraphale bows his head.

"I can't." He confesses. Crowley's lips curl in disgust, and the angel rushes to explain, placating him. "You see, they're in my head. Your memories, I mean. I could tell you everything, it won't prove anything because you..."

"Can't verify." Crowley interrupts, dully. "You could be lying and I'd never know."

"But why would I? I really have no reason to, you know." The angel is earnest in his conviction, but Crowley can't bring himself to meet his gaze.

"Don't ask me to explain heaven's motives. It's beyond my understanding. Why would they give you my memories? Stupid bastards."

"Crowley, my dear." He's being so damnably gentle. Bless him, the stupid bastard. "I'm not really a messenger of heaven anymore. You're the one who keeps reminding me that apparently we have free will now."

"Shut up, angel." He doesn't want to listen. The longer he lets the angel talk, the more sense he begins to make, and the more Crowley is tempted--God dammit, he's tempted--to trust him.

"Crowley, please..." believe me, he doesn't say. "Look," Shrugging helplessly, he offers the only thing that comes to mind. “I could just give you your name. I don’t think it’d be banned, as long as you didn’t remember anything, which you wouldn’t of course, but…” He babbles to a halt under Crowley’s expressionless gaze. 

“My name? Without the memories? Why?”

“I… thought you might like to know. Even if you don't remember." 

That's when Crowley realises something: It doesn't matter that he won't remember anything along with the name. The idea of it doesn't terrify him the way it used to. In fact, it hardly bothers him at all.

Something finally breaks within him. In the end, all it took was one last, quiet statement to do it. All the tension leaks out of him. His shoulders slump, and with a little sigh, he looks up at last.

"Alright. Fine." He says.

Aziraphale nods solemnly. Without pomp, or circumstance, or anything but a blank expression, he reaches forwards. Two fingers extend towards the demon's forehead.

Crowley grabs them. His hands are shaking. The angel stops.

"No."

Just one word, and everything vanishes. Just for a second, he could have been... everything that he had never wanted to be. For all it had brought him, Crowley had never wanted to return to heaven. Falling had been awful, but he had never really regretted it. 

“Just the name.” 

Six thousand years ago, he had been lost. Rebirth had left him a blank slate, devoid of all memory except for the knowledge that there had once been memory. Tabula rasa. It was hollow, that emptiness, and it ached. It was a wound that stung for a very long time, took it's sweet time to heal--but heal it did.

Crowley is a demon, first and foremost. He has been a demon for as long as he can remember. The personality and experiences that have made up this existence are his, are a part of him, and finally, there are enough of them to fill the hole that his Grace had left when it had been torn from him.

...and he's content. Happy, even, though he wouldn't dare admit it to his superiors.

The two of them breathe in silence. The unnecessary motion has become habit for both angel and demon now. 

“Nachash.” The angel’s eyes follow him as he shifts, but his concerned expression soon relaxes when Crowley shakes his head. “Nothing?” 

For some reason, that doesn’t bother him. He yearned for so long, desired more than anything on earth the only thing he could never have, and now he has it… 

“Nothing.” He confirms, his smirk slightly rueful and completely devoid of humour. 

It sent Lilith insane, it drove the fallen to distraction, and yet Crowley somehow avoided all of that. The mess that his fallen brethren became did not extend to him. He doesn’t quite have the presence of mind to wonder why. He stretches, cracking all the joints in his spine and then shaking it out, feeling them settle more comfortably. 

“All right. Let’s do lunch. The Ritz?”

Aziraphale blinks at him, dumbfounded. Crowley understands his confusion, he supposes--the angel has known him long enough to know most of his motives and reasons, and he supposes that his entirely predictable actions may seem completely out of place. 

“Is that it? You don’t want anything else?” At the beginning, Aziraphale didn’t have a suspicious bone in his body. Now, Crowley is proud to see, the look the angel is giving him is the result of a long-cultivated seed that he has been preening into bloom for a very long time. He congratulations himself on a job well done whilst simultaneously snorting in derision. 

“Oh come on angel. You know me better than that. I’m not doing it for you.” Aziraphale blinks and Crowley stands and starts to saunter towards the door. "It's not like I haven't tempted you to rebel against heaven before, and I really can't bring myself to regret helping to prevent the Apocalypse." He yawns, as if waking from a deep sleep, then gestures at the angel with a lazy flick of his hand, his back already turned. “Put those wings away, people will stare.” 

“Of course, my dear.” Aziraphale stands up, his wings snapping away behind him. He seems resolved, but his eyes waver just a fraction of a second before he does, and Crowley sees the next question coming. “If you’re really sure that you don’t want…?” 

He trails away, uncertain. Crowley's seemingly spontaneous and completely unexpected reaction is unnerving, to say the least. For such a big decision, he's determined to ascertain that his friend has thought it through properly.

“No.” Crowley says again, when it becomes clear that Aziraphale does not intend to finish that sentence. He curls his toes into the carpet. It feels good--satisfying--that coarse rub of friction against his scales. 

He does not want those old memories back, because they are not his. Nachash, whoever he may once have been, is someone that was never a part of this Crowley. Having to suddenly accommodate that part of himself, Crowley feels, would be detrimental to his wellbeing. He is Crowley, the demon, né Crawly, the Serpent of Eden. He is a tempter and a sinner. He is much less of a bastard than he would like to admit, but an angel he is not, and--as far as he’s concerned--he never has been. 

"Oh. My dear." Says Aziraphale, and later, he buys lunch. Crowley thinks he understands. 

—

It’s the year 2000 A.D, the turn of the millennium that they thought might never come, and Crowley and Aziraphale are seated on Crowley’s balcony sipping champagne from crystal flutes.

“Must we really drink this?” Aziraphale complains, studying the fizzy liquid in his glass, sadly. 

“It’s traditional. We’re celebrating.” Crowley insists for what must be the hundredth time already, glaring at him behind his sunglasses, tiny supernovae of light reflecting off the dark lenses. 

Aziraphale sighs, and resigns himself to it. The demon has a very strange idea of celebration. Aziraphale still remembers the first human fireworks too clearly to enjoy the comparatively harmless ones now. Crowley hadn’t even been in the country at the time.

They drink in silence for a while, watching the colourful explosions in the air around them. 

“Do you think they’ve forgotten about us?” The demon asks, quietly. Aziraphale takes one look at his champagne, turns it into some very strong whiskey, and downs the whole thing. “Hey, don’t waste that!"

“I’m not wasting it. I’m using it to get drunk.”

“Drunker.” The observation is, unfortunately, entirely accurate, but Aziraphale is in no mood to argue his place. 

“More drunk, dear. ‘Drunker’ isn’t good grammar.”

“Mm. Good really isn’t my thing.”

There is another silence. The demon shifts uncomfortably, aware that he has unwittingly upset the angel somehow, but not quite sure how. 

Crowley has always been more perceptive than he likes to let on, Aziraphale reflects. He is a master at astute observations. They no longer wrong-foot him, now that he has got his angelic head around the idea that demons (or fallen angels, at least) can in fact be very clever. Crowley is living--sort of--proof. 

“You don’t think they’ve forgotten about us.” The demon affirms. From this angle, the angel can just catch a glimpse of yellowish-gold as Crowley moves his head, knocking back another swig of champagne. Aziraphale thinks about lecturing Crowley on the consumption of fine spirits, but then decides it would be too hypocritical to get away with, even if Crowley doesn’t notice most of the time. 

“Well, I’m not sure. I think they ensured that we wouldn’t forget about them.” 

“What? What do you mean?” 

The demon gets no reply. Aziraphale’s glass refills itself with sparkling Champagne. 

“I must admit, dear, you were right about the view.” Aziraphale says, quietly. Crowley snorts in an undignified manner.

“The alternative was sitting on the roof of your bookshop, and there’s no way I was going to pass up a chance to see these properly. They cost the government an absolute bomb.” His tone is admiring, and Aziraphale suddenly realises that that means there is less money going towards, say, preventing homelessness and improving education. It's a small thing, and something they've been doing for years, and Crowley being involved probably didn't really make very much difference. 

He still sounds proud of himself for thinking of it.

Aziraphale feels sick.

—

The earth changed everything. Whether it was for good or for bad, he can't tell anymore. That's the thing about humanity. It changes your perspective.

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it. This was written, as previously stated, over mostly one weekend. Various trains, a restaurant, a hotel room, a car, and a sports hall halfway across the country, I thank thee. I may now be able to do the rest of my essays before Monday. 
> 
> Et voila!
> 
> Also, may thanks to Dee for pointing out the stupid mistakes because I am physically incapable of reliably proofreading my own work. Whoop whoop! Seriously, you're an angel and your eye for detail terrifies me.


End file.
